Drugs ignored in favour of immigration checks as 650,000 alerts unread and deleted

Hundreds of thousands of suspected cases of drug smuggling were not
investigated last year because border guards were “prioritising” immigration
checks, an official inspection review discloses on Wednesday.

Border: the case will raise further questions about the how the National Health Service and Britain’s welfare state are subject to potential abuse Photo: London News Pictures

More than 649,000 alerts relating to potential drug and tobacco smuggling into the UK were deleted from a Government computer system for border controls without being read, the inspection found.

The deletions had a “significant impact” on the ability of staff at the border to seize banned goods and arrest those responsible for smuggling them into the country, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration John Vine said.

After last year’s passenger queues at Heathrow and other airports, immigration chiefs have taken staff away from customs checks to process passengers. A series of reports by Mr Vine have highlighted how this new focus has led to the neglect of work to stop drugs and contraband.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, censored swathes of the latest report which found the £500 million “e-Borders” computer project is still not operating properly nearly a decade after it began, and is failing to stop foreign criminals and smugglers entering the UK.

Mrs May ordered the deletion of 39 passages in the document, including sections which were critical of how the Border Force handled “high profile” alerts. Her censorship means it will remain secret whether the Border Force is failing to stop foreigners — including dangerous criminals, child abusers and war criminals — who try to get into Britain despite having been deported or excluded.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said there was a “catalogue of chaos at border control” while Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, said e-Borders had been a “disaster” which had cost the taxpayer dearly.

• Nearly 650,000 alerts about smugglers of drugs and other contraband, as well as tax avoiders, were deleted without being read over a period of just 10 months, or more than 2,000 a day.

• Border guards are failing to stop individuals who have no right to come to Britain because of a glitch that means targets can slip through if staff finish their shift without logging out of the file.

• The EU has been a “significant barrier” to Britain’s ability to collect data on international passengers before they travel — a key part of the Home Office’s strengthening of border controls — because it breaches “free movement” rights.

One of the most damaging disclosures was the Border Force’s “inconsistent” implementation of measures to intercept banned foreigners. The “Salah Action Plan” was introduced in 2011 after the Palestinian hate preacher Raed Salah walked through immigration despite being banned from Britain by the Home Secretary just days previously.

Mr Vine’s inquiry said: “We found inconsistent practice across the three airports we visited. While Heathrow was compliant with the Salah Action Plan and deployed staff to intercept the subjects of deportation orders and exclusions at arrival gates, Gatwick and Luton did not.

“The lack of a properly documented policy and instruction setting out clearly what Border Force staff at ports should do was unacceptable.”

The e-Borders system was meant to crack down on illegal immigrants by integrating checks and enabling the immigration agency to count all foreigners in and out of Britain. It would also raise alerts when criminals and other banned individuals tried to come here.

The programme, begun under Labour in 2004, has already cost £500 million and in nine years’ time the total cost is expected to have risen to £1.2 billion.

Ms Cooper said: “It is now clear that in the last three years the e-Borders programme has ground to a halt causing serious failures in border security.

“Theresa May needs to sort out the catalogue of chaos at border control.

“It is an outrage that drug smugglers have been able to get away with it because basic information was never acted on.”

She added that Mrs May should give confidential briefings to the Opposition and MPs on the deleted sections, to ensure “redactions are not being used to hide serious failings”.

Mr Vaz, chairman of the all-party Commons committee which oversees the work of the Home Office, said: “The e-Borders programme has been a disaster for successive governments.

“The promise for e-Borders to secure our borders is simple and has been successfully implemented in Australia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. Yet this ongoing saga has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.

“It is essential for our national security that exit checks are implemented as a matter of urgency. This was a clear commitment in the Coalition Agreement.”

Mark Harper, the immigration minister, said: “Border Force is making significant improvements in its performance.

“Passengers travelling to Britain are checked across a variety of databases before departure and upon arrival.”